|
|||||
|
Yesterday, I wrote that the writers of the Open Letter outlining eight problems with Norway’s REDD support to Guyana were still waiting for a response from Erik Solheim, Norway’s Minister of the Environment. Within a couple of hours of posting, REDD-Monitor received a copy of a letter from Erik Solheim. His letter is extraordinary on several counts, but most importantly, it fails to address the eight problems in the Open Letter.
Next week, Erik Solheim, Norway’s Minister of the Environment & International Development, will be visiting Guyana. A year ago, Solheim congratulated Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo when he was awarded the United Nations’ 2010 Champion of the Earth. Solheim described Jagdeo’s promotion of low carbon development as “an example for others to follow.”
Rainforest Action Network has sent a briefing note to more than 100 companies that consume pulp, paper and palm oil, requesting that they support a robust moratorium on forest concessions in Indonesia. The companies include Staples, General Mills, Levis, and Bank of America.
REDD in Indonesia: We are still waiting for the forest moratorium that should have started on 1 January 2011. Greenpeace notes that the latest draft of the decree (needed to make the moratorium legally binding) “will fail to protect vital rainforests.” Meanwhile, Norway is investing in companies involved in forest destruction in the REDD pilot province, Central Kalimantan.
The access road to the Amaila Falls hydropower dam in Guyana’s forest is already under construction. The project is one of those listed in President Bharrat Jagdeo’s Low Carbon Development Strategy. Potential financiers of the hydropower project include the China Development Bank, the China Railway First Group, the InterAmerican Development Bank and the Norwegian Government.
Interview with Elfian Effendi, Executive Director of Greenomics Indonesia, January 2011, Jakarta, by email.
“The world is looking for a great example somewhere,” Jan Hartke, a consultant to the Clinton Foundation wrote in June 2009. “Wonderfully enough,” he continued, “President Jagdeo’s leadership has quite honestly inspired people around the world, and you really need leadership on something like this if we are able to get progress in Copenhagen. He will be able to show how other countries can follow the emergent Guyana model.”
Zulkifli Hasan, Indonesia’s Minister of Forestry, recently issued almost three million hectares of new plantation concessions to 44 firms. There’s nothing surprising about that. Indonesia has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, largely due to oil palm and fast-growing pulpwood plantations. What is perhaps surprising is the timing.
Guyana’s president, Bharrat Jagdeo, hit the headlines during COP-16 for his “Show me the money,” speech at a side event organised by Avoided Deforestation Partners. “Although we have fulfilled the condition to receive payment from Norway a year ago,” Jagdeo said, “we have not seen a single cent expended as yet on the projects that are so vital to transformation.”
On 30 December 2010, Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced that the province of Central Kalimantan had been selected as a pilot REDD province. (More on that decision in a future post.) But four days later, the Jakarta Globe reported that another part of the US$1 billion Indonesia-Norway REDD deal – the moratorium on forest clearing – was delayed.
A group of scientists has written to the governments of Indonesia and Norway, to emphasise the importance of not only reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also supporting “the conservation of Indonesia’s rich and diverse forest ecosystems.”
Norway has agreed to fund the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund to the tune of US$250 million. Obviously, the Norwegian government isn’t just going to hand over the money. Under the agreement between the two countries, an independent organisation will conduct an assessment of whether the “REDD+ enablers” have been met.
“Forest peoples’ voices are increasingly being heard, and attended to, in debates about the future of the forests,” writes Marcus Colchester, the Director of the Forest Peoples Programme in FPP’s October ENewsletter. He describes how the movement for the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples has made great progress in the past two decades.
Last week, the Government of Norway signed an agreement at the headquarters of the World Bank in Washington setting up the “Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund” (GRIF). Like much else in the brave new world of REDD, the deal raises more questions than answers.
On 22 September 2010, at the UN General Assembly in New York, Norway and Indonesia plan to upgrade the billion dollar forest deal from a letter of intent to a legally binding agreement. On the same day that this was announced, Reuters reported that Wandojo Siswanto, one of the forestry officials who helped negotiate the Norway deal is a suspect in a multi-million dollar corruption case. |
|||||
|
|
|||||
